MIT no longer considers SAT subject tests as part of admissions process

Requiring the tests was not ‘worth the cost in terms of fair access,’ Schmill wrote

Starting this fall, MIT will no longer consider SAT subject tests for the first-year and transfer student admissions process, Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill ’86 announced on the MIT Admissions Blogs March 20.

“We found that as fewer schools have been requiring the tests, fewer students have been taking them, and as such they had become both somewhat less predictive for us and more exclusive,” Schmill wrote in an email to The Tech. “Our research showed that the other components of the application are sufficient to establish academic preparation.”

Schmill wrote that “it wasn’t worth the cost in terms of fair access in practice or principle” to continue requiring the tests.

MIT Admissions will not consider the subject tests even if students have already taken them. “If we weren’t going to require them from everyone, we didn’t want to consider them for anyone,” Schmill wrote.

This decision was made after more than a year of discussion with the faculty policy committee. Schmill wrote that no other changes are expected for the application process for the 2020-21 admissions cycle.

MIT previously required applicants to submit scores for at least two subject tests: one science (Biology, Chemistry, or Physics) and one math (either Math Level 1 or Math Level 2).